In the morning, it is as though it never happened. He is if anything more attentive. Over breakfast, he suggests we take a trip together. Where would I like to go? Have I ever been skiing? No? He will take me skiing then: we could go to the Colorado mountains. I will love it.
I eat my eggs, and sip my coffee. This is the bargain that I have made. I understand now.
30
In the hall outside, an old clock strikes one o’clock. Hal is lying in bed, turning the compass over in his palm. He has become used to the particular weight and feel of it in his hand. Of late, he has even begun to carry it with him in the pocket of his trousers. Even as it unsettles him, he feels now a connection with it that he wouldn’t be able, even if he tried, to put into words. At some point, he will have to give it back to the Contessa. The idea fills him with a powerful regret.
As for the journal … he is aware that there are only a few pages of writing left. He is reading these last few more slowly. He can’t decide if this is because he wishes to eke them out, because then this peculiar journey will be finished, or because he is apprehensive of what they will contain.
A MONTH HAS passed, and the painting is still not finished. He is beginning to grow impatient. There is a particular expanse of wall that he knows will be perfect for it. The Flemish artist suggests that if he were to come and work on it every day – rather than a couple of times a week – the wait could be shortened. The captain agrees. Often, when he comes to visit Luna, he finds the painter just leaving – having spent a long morning at work on the piece. He has the chaotic look peculiar to men of his ilk, the captain thinks: his hair and clothes in disarray, his face flushed with the exertion of his craft.
Several times, he has asked to see the painting. But the painter refuses. ‘It might affect the rest of the work,’ he says. ‘I must be allowed to create without the weight of another’s opinion informing me of how to proceed.’
The captain would like to say that, as he is the one paying for the painting, it perhaps shouldn’t matter if his opinion informs it. But he knows little of the artistic process, and doesn’t want to jeopardize it. He must continue, instead, to be content with looking at the subject herself in the snatched time permitted between sittings for the portrait and the hours she spends resting in her chamber.
Finally, the artist informs the captain, the unveiling is ready to occur. The painting is finished. The captain is almost beside himself with excitement. He has already instructed a master framer to get ready a gilt frame for the dimensions of the canvas: it will be on his wall in a matter of days. He enters the salon where the painter and Luna wait for him.
He waits with breath held as the artist draws back the curtain of material shielding the image from view. The scent of the oil – rich, resinous – reaches him before the painting is exposed, and he closes his eyes to better appreciate it.
When he opens his eyes, it is before him. There she is in all her loveliness – as lovely, if not more so, as the woman who sits beside the canvas. It is a work of brilliance: some source of light appearing to shine from within it, illuminating the bones of the face, the whites of the eyes, casting the shadow of long dark lashes upon her cheeks.
But something is wrong. He cannot understand it at first. It is not the image itself, so much as the feeling that emanates from it. Confused, he glances back at the painter and the girl, just in time to see a look, quick as a shift of the light, pass between them. And in that look is all the answer he needs.
He lunges for the girl. ‘Puttana!’ His hands find her upper arms, he drags her from the seat onto the floor.
The painter grapples with him, but the man is slight, small-boned, and shaken off easily.
‘Is it true?’ he shouts at the girl. ‘You would let him seduce you, and not me?’
She will not answer him, even as his fingers dig into the flesh of her upper arms.
There is a growl, and then the beast of a dog is hurtling toward him, teeth bared. The weight of it knocks him to his feet, and its claws rip quickly through the silk of his shirt, scouring the tender skin beneath. The creature’s breath, hot and foul, is in his nostrils. The thing will consume him, he thinks – and he shrieks in fear and pain. There is a pause, long enough for the dog to reveal its rows of crooked teeth. And then it is clambering off him, with evident reluctance, and trotting to its mistress’ heels. She has called it off.
He has never known such humiliation, and such rage. She has betrayed him, utterly. She needs to be taught a lesson that she will not forget. There is only one place he can think of going.
‘Father,’ he tells the priest. ‘I have been bewitched. I am ashamed to say it, but I have allowed myself to be seduced by one who follows the way of Diana.’